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Topic Review (Newest First)

02-21-2014 10:09 AM

wavsine

^Seriously...

02-21-2014 08:43 AM

Focus YBTC

Quote:

Originally Posted by gostinger

The madness continues

I didn't read this whole thread but I have to chime in here and say my 2012 DCT operates perfectly and gets better over time as the car wears in. Every time I drive it I marvel at how snickety-snick smooth and wonderful it has become.

02-19-2014 03:32 PM

GhiaFan

Quote:

Originally Posted by wavsine

The new 2015 Ford Focus will debut at the Geneva auto show next month. The 64 dollar question is will it still have the dry clutch DCT or will Ford abandon it. Retention of the dry clutch DCT might actually be of benefit to existing 2012-2014 owners since it may signal Ford is figuring out how to remedy all the problems. Perhaps a clutch revision "E" will be introduced.

My personal opinion: clutches are best when operated by a left foot, not a computer.

Algorithm testing of the DCT was performed by Ford civilian employees:

"Ford started with a simulator program in which "civilian" Ford employees tested a wide range of control strategies."

I have said it a thousand times......the issue for dry dual clutch transmissions is thermal.

VW's horror story on their dry dual clutch should have been a red flag for Ford , but I guess the low cost associated with manufacturing the dry dual clutch clouded their better judgement.

I predict a similar fallout for Ford as what happened to VW (extended warranty). will be in the future when thousands of out of warranty dry dual clutch owners have to dig deep into the bank account to keep their dry dual clutch operating in a respectable fashion.

That said, my Powershift dry dual clutch in the 2012 Focus wagon has been a real peach. But I believe the set up is quite different between North America and Europe, because of the emission requirements being different and other considerations.

Also I believe different driving conditions for each owner will result in how this transmission operates.
If you do lots of stop and go, you will experience the dry dual clutch at its worse.
Lots of highway and very little stop and go or mountain roads, then it works as advertised.

I suggest Ford get out of the dry dual clutch arena, and not get buried in a storm like VW is facing around the world, minus the North American market.

02-19-2014 02:28 PM

Doctor Drew

If my car weren't a lease and I wasn't trading up at the end of the year, I'd probably be raising hell at my dealer about the transmission; it seems to have gotten noticeably worse this winter in terms of shuddering and looooooong shift times (and once the selectshift just said "nope" when I tried shifting from first to second and I lost "sport" mode until the car was restarted).

It's just kind of sad that my relatively new car with 13,000 miles shifts like my old V8 SHO that had 130,000.

I haven't come across one that mentions any real world vehicle testing. Though I'm sure there has to be one somewhere?
If not, then it's quite clear the computer nerds didn't get the testing strategies correct.

I knew nothing of how this DCT worked and this thread forced me to learn and read.
The conclusion I came to is more questions and theory than anything.
I wonder how many of the concerns come from owners who've never driven a manual transmission?
The one thing that, from the problem threads I'd read and possible solutions, I've found is that the problem all seems to stem from clutch temperature.
I'm not sure if any of you have ever overheated a clutch. But I can tell you the functionality of it changes greatly. If bad enough it can get to the point of the car not moving at all. Less severe, chatter beyond belief. But in my experience it took a lot of abuse to get to that point.
It's very similar to 'brake fade'. Both are friction materials and both are designed to create heat and mitigate it.

Now I would say some may have to do with driving style. In the case of someone who's never driven a manual transmission, they may try to operate it at too low of RPM and the clutches generate too much heat, or heat faster than the spinning of the clutch pack can move air around to cool itself. ... Because in most threads I've found, most say at highway speeds they have little to no problems. So heat and air flow seem to be the best theory IMO.

The question then becomes how to remedy that problem.
The simple solution would be more RPM. How much would be trial and error but you at least have some basis to go by, road speed RPM.
Another alternative may be a breather or venting of the clutches, or active cooling.
Reliability and repeatability concerns come into play from an open bellhousing. Road debris can contaminate the clutch/es and cause concerns. But what if the clutch was able to draw clean air? Then the debris and contamination factor is lowered, possibly eliminated. That would sound like a feasible option/remedy to me. But applying it to existing vehicles would be cumbersome and expensive.

Now the question I haven't seen posed is "what changes are contained in these strategy updates/revisions?"
I feel that if one of us knew that we'd have a better understanding of what is going wrong.
But reading the good articles should shed light on what the updates are doing. The SAE article mentions that there are no heat sensors in the trans and that it is all done by math, fancy math. So knowing that and keeping with my theory of heat, I'd say it's a good bet that the updates are simply modifying the critical temps of the clutches.
But with no way to actually measure temps it's always going to be trial and error. Always!

So that says someone needs to devise a way to physically measure the temp of the clutches. Problem there is the sensor would have to be a no contact one and survive in the dirty environment of clutch dust. But hold on. I brought up 'active cooling' and filtered air. If both of those were combined the air inside the trans wouldn't be some contaminated and the sensor would have less chance of getting dirty and providing false data.

There are my thoughts. In any new version I would expect to see an actual temp sensor and possibly some type of filtered cooling air system. I feel that having both would reduce most issues if not all.

There isn't 50+ threads on this issue and appears to be more of a software issue and not mechanical so no worries here but with a DCT I would be concerned problems would happen sooner or later and I wouldn't find what Ford considers "normal" to be acceptable but alot of people with DCTs make excuses for that "normal" behavior and just accept it's flaws.

02-19-2014 10:13 AM

crazy_urn

Quote:

Originally Posted by dan50

Let's try this: compared to other similar situations and similar automakers (even including Ford), on a scale of 1 - 5, with 5 being best how would you rate the Focus DCT situation in terms of:

a) Releasing a good-quality product to the public, demonstrating both thorough pre-production testing and a willingness to hold back production if standards weren't met (like Chrysler just did with the Jeep Cherokee's transmission). Keeping in mind that it took the automotive press all of, say, 10 minutes in a DCT Focus to highlight the problem and that Ford has tons of DCT experience in Europe.

b) Promptly and efficiently dealing with problems when they become evident. Keeping in mind that Ford has spent three calendar years on this issue so far, and only called in the "A" team a year ago. Maybe it's fixed, but maybe not quite. Three years.

I give Ford a "1" in both categories. You may grade higher, but certainly not more than a "2".

This has less to do with corporate morality than it does corporate competence. Maybe the Focus experience was a low point for Ford, maybe they've learned a thing or two, maybe future launches will be better. But as a Focus owner, none of that mitigates my frustration and disappointment with Ford.

I agree that the grade would be appalling. But the grade really has much more to do with accounting than competency.

When you try to develop new vehicles, there will always be some bumps. Some of them are minor, some of them are not. (the pinto, the Expolorer/Firestone disaster, and the toyota unintended acceleration recall all come to mind.) Although it is frustrating for those dealing with the issue, the DCT is no where near that level of failure.

You can be pissed off at Ford. Trust me, I am about the SPI. But you can't assume any other manufacturer would act any differently. You can point out other manufacturers who acted differently, but each problem is different, hence, each solution (or lack there of) is different. And we, as consumers, simply do not have enough information to judge. With our limited information, assuming that company A responds better to customer complaints than company B is simply not possible.

At the end of the day, all we can say is, I wish Ford would handle this differently. We can't say, Chrysler, Honda, Chevy, Toyota, etc. would handle this situation differently. It all boils down to numbers, and if this were any other manufacturer, the numbers would not be any different.

02-18-2014 07:55 PM

wavsine

Quote:

Originally Posted by dan50

You're right in that all major automakers act in their own self-interest. And I'm not naive enough to think Ford will do the "right thing" for owners unless they think the cost/benefit relationship makes sense.

Ford, like any publicly traded company, has to answer to shareholders. Don't look for benevolence on this matter.

Let's try this: compared to other similar situations and similar automakers (even including Ford), on a scale of 1 - 5, with 5 being best how would you rate the Focus DCT situation in terms of:

a) Releasing a good-quality product to the public, demonstrating both thorough pre-production testing and a willingness to hold back production if standards weren't met (like Chrysler just did with the Jeep Cherokee's transmission). Keeping in mind that it took the automotive press all of, say, 10 minutes in a DCT Focus to highlight the problem and that Ford has tons of DCT experience in Europe.

1, but keeping in mind that the European DCT is a wet clutch design.

b) Promptly and efficiently dealing with problems when they become evident. Keeping in mind that Ford has spent three calendar years on this issue so far, and only called in the "A" team a year ago. Maybe it's fixed, but maybe not quite. Three years. 1

The new 2015 Ford Focus will debut at the Geneva auto show next month. The 64 dollar question is will it still have the dry clutch DCT or will Ford abandon it. Retention of the dry clutch DCT might actually be of benefit to existing 2012-2014 owners since it may signal Ford is figuring out how to remedy all the problems. Perhaps a clutch revision "E" will be introduced.

My personal opinion: clutches are best when operated by a left foot, not a computer.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dan50

The DCT was released as a grossly underdeveloped product. Auto magazines panned the thing immediately and complaints from new owners came in awfully quickly. Either Ford's testing process was grossly deficient or they became prisoners of the calendar and knowingly released a deficient product.

Algorithm testing of the DCT was performed by Ford civilian employees:

"Ford started with a simulator program in which "civilian" Ford employees tested a wide range of control strategies."

These persistent threads on the DCT make me appreciate my 5 speed more everyday and thanks to this site the apparent issues with the DCT were such a hot topic from the day I registered I never even considered the option. Thanks FF.

I hope Ford gets these problems straight but I'd never trust one enough to recommend a DCT to a friend.

I think you are wrongly assuming that the decision made by Honda was anything other than a business decision. Sure the extended warranty may have been voluntary, but if you think for a minute they did it out of the kindness of their heart because of concern for their consumers, you have been duped. It was the best business decision. Doesn't extended transmission warranty have a better ring to it than recall? So they replace bad publicity of a common transmission problem with the good publicity of the warranty, without using the term recall, and saving a ton of money by avoiding a full recall.

Ford is no better or no worse than any other car company. They are just in the negative part of the cycle. There is no range of corporate behaviors. There is the best business decision in that particular situation, and that is it. it all boils down to the cost/benefit analysis. That is the bible for corporate financial decisions. The most extreme public example of this was the Pinto Memorandum. But if you think any other car company (or major company) operates any differently, you are greatly mistaken.

You're right in that all major automakers act in their own self-interest. And I'm not naive enough to think Ford will do the "right thing" for owners unless they think the cost/benefit relationship makes sense.

Let's try this: compared to other similar situations and similar automakers (even including Ford), on a scale of 1 - 5, with 5 being best how would you rate the Focus DCT situation in terms of:

a) Releasing a good-quality product to the public, demonstrating both thorough pre-production testing and a willingness to hold back production if standards weren't met (like Chrysler just did with the Jeep Cherokee's transmission). Keeping in mind that it took the automotive press all of, say, 10 minutes in a DCT Focus to highlight the problem and that Ford has tons of DCT experience in Europe.

b) Promptly and efficiently dealing with problems when they become evident. Keeping in mind that Ford has spent three calendar years on this issue so far, and only called in the "A" team a year ago. Maybe it's fixed, but maybe not quite. Three years.

I give Ford a "1" in both categories. You may grade higher, but certainly not more than a "2".

This has less to do with corporate morality than it does corporate competence. Maybe the Focus experience was a low point for Ford, maybe they've learned a thing or two, maybe future launches will be better. But as a Focus owner, none of that mitigates my frustration and disappointment with Ford.

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